You Can't Kill a Corpse

by Louis Trimble

  He had chosen the pool because he guessed that all roads of the park would lead into the area. He walked idly down a paved pathway, following a sign toward the picnic grounds. He stepped onto the graveled road just as a car went by him. There was a squeal of brakes and gravel spattered from the car’s wheels. Clane saw that it was Bob Morgan’s hopped up Ford and he walked toward it. Edith Morgan was at the wheel, looking out of place in the racy car. She wore a green cloth coat with a fur collar and a hat to match. She looked more like afternoon cocktails than someone driving a heap like that.

  Then Clane saw her face. She was whiter and more strained-looking than she had been the night before. Something was working inside her so he could see the fear naked in her eyes and around her vivid mouth. He opened the door and got in.

  She jerked into gear and the little car took off. They drove in silence for five minutes. Clane turned from her to the scenery. He liked it. The park was wild there, the road rising away from the river and climbing a slight slope. The underbrush and trees had been left in their natural state and they were close to being a jungle. At a break in the trees she turned the car off the road and stopped.

  She turned to him and spoke before he could adjust himself to the sudden quiet. “I’m sorry about last night—this morning,” she said. There was appeal in her eyes. She hesitated, waited.

  Clane handed her a cigarette. “Get on with it,” he said brusquely.

  She smoked a full minute bofore she spoke again. Then she said slowly, “I was scared last night. I still am but it’s different now.” She was looking directly at him. She was very tense, he saw, almost rigid with the effort of trying to control herself. He let her take her time about continuing. It was obvious that she needed nerve to say whatever she had in mind. He made no effort to help her.

  “I need your help,” she blurted out. She reached out one hand as if in appeal and then dropped it to her lap.

  “So does your old man,” Clane said bluntly.

  “I need it for him too,” she said. She took a breath and said, as if it were difficult, “Please!”

  Clane decided on the tactics he would use with her. He would not be gentle; he had an idea she would take advantage of him if he tried to go easy. Besides, he wasn’t feeling in that mood. He was half angry because she had spent a lot of precious hours making up her mind to cooperate. Clane was a careful man in his work but it never kept him from making a decision fast when he needed to.

  He said, “I have to have the whole story. I can’t work with a lot of missing pieces. I’m not playing ‘What’s the clue’ with you. A missing piece might mean a rope around someone’s neck—even mine. Whatever you know I have to know. Agreed?”

  “Yes,” she said. Her voice was almost inaudible. Clane could see the fear rising in her, making her breath come faster.

  “Relax, Edith,” he said. “I didn’t bring a drink, but relax.”

  “I wish I could get drunk and forget it,” she said fiercely.

  “We’ll take that up later,” Clane said. “Now start in. Just keep talking. I might ask questions but don’t let me throw you. Give me the works.”

  She began without preamble, with only a second’s hesitation. “Yesterday Dad went to see Anthony. He threatened Anthony if he didn’t stop seeing me.” She elevated her jaw. “I’m old enough to take care of myself but Dad doesn’t seem to think so.”

  “When a man is in politics anything can be made into a stink,” Clane said.

  “I realize that,” she told him. “Dad was talking to me last night. Anthony had told him it was my business—his and mine. Dad was trying to have me break off our relationsip. I couldn’t. I was afraid to tell Dad why.”

  “Afraid of what he might think?”

  “Afraid what he might do,” she amended. “I just kept telling Dad that I was fond of Anthony. He didn’t believe me, I know. I guess I’m not a good actress.”

  Clane silently agreed with her. He said, “And you were fond of him?”

  “Once, very,” she said. “Two years ago.” She tried a wan smile. “I wasn’t as mature as I thought. In fact, I was an awful fool.”

  Clane began to see the light. “The usual? Letter?”

  “Letters and a tenderly inscribed photograph. Pressed flowers I saved from picnics we went on. I kept mementoes. I behaved like I was sixteen.”

  “What use would Wickett have for stuff like that?”

  She flushed deeply. Instead of answering him she said, “I stopped going with him shortly before Dad decided to run for mayor. Anthony was becoming impatient. He asked everything and offered nothing. And by then I had lost the crush I had on him. Anthony didn’t seem to mind, but when Dad announced he would run against Mayor Pryor, Anthony called me and had me come and see him.”

  “And he used your letters as a prod?” Clane asked.

  “Yes,” she admitted. “He sat in his library and read some of them to me. Do you know how awful something like that can sound?”

  “No,” Clane said, “I make love at close quarters only.”

  “They sounded terrible. And I never realized how ambiguous certain phrases could be.”

  “What was he trying to get out of you?”

  She smiled quite genuinely this time. “It wasn’t that melodramatic,” she assured him. She dropped the smile. “He wanted to know Dad’s tactics and things like that. I’m helping with the campaign, you see, and Anthony wanted inside information. He could use it in his editorials—sort of black our moves.”

  “Morgan must have been running ahead of Pryor then.”

  “He was,” she said. “Dad had every chance. Until now.”

  “And you let Wickett scare you into spying with a few two-year-old love letters?”

  She colored under the hint of contempt in his voice. She said, “I told you I had sent him my photograph. And I gave him lots of pictures too. Snapshots we had taken at various places.” She picked up her purse. Clane watched her fingers shake as she undid the clasp. She took a thick, legal-sized envelope from the purse and handed it to him. “Anthony showed me this before,” she said. “I—I stole it last night.”

  Clane took a look. He glanced inquiringly at her.

  “It’s a photocopy,” she said. “Whoever killed him took the original. Don’t you see?” Clane sensed mounting hysteria in her voice and he put out a hand. She nodded jerkily at him and her mouth twisted. “He was dead when I went there last night. And the original wasn’t there.” She was pleading with him now, straining forward as if to impart some of her urgency into him. “I have to find the original. I have …”

  “Sure,” Clane said flatly. His deliberate coldness made her sag back against the seat of the car. He looked briefly at her white, drawn face and then turned to the envelope.

  He drew out a photographic reproduction of a tabloid-sized newspaper page. It had not been printed but simply made up of clippings and photographs pasted to a sheet of paper. Clane read samples of what he supposed were excerpts of her letters to Wickett. He turned his attention to the photographs centering the page.

  “Do all the women in this town take their clothes off?” he demanded.

  ELEVEN

  She was flushing openly now. “Can’t you see what a scandal sheet like that would do to Dad? she demanded. “Not only to his campaign but to his business. Anthony threatened me with that! I couldn’t be sure he was bluffing.”

  “He actually threatened to print this—privately, I suppose—and have it distributed?”

  “Yes.” She set her lips and looked fully at him. “Those pictures! That is my face and—and head. But that is not my body.”

  “I wouldn’t know,” Clane murmured. He took a close, scrutinizing look. “No,” he said, “it isn’t. It’s what is know as a composite. I wish,” he added, “I had killed Wickett. Slowly.”

  “Can’t you see?” she pleaded. “After I left you I kept thinking and thinking about it. I didn’t know where to turn. All I could see was that someone else ha
d the original of this ghastly thing.”

  “Presumably the murderer. You’re sure it isn’t your father?”

  “No,” she said in a low voice, “I’m not sure.” She put her hand on his arm and clung tightly to him. “I’m not sure of anything any more. I’m too scared to think. This morning about four I got up and tried to call you. There was no answer. I was frantic. I woke up Bob. The poor kid. I kept him up, calling you.”

  “I’m glad you did,” Clane said. “I was busy.”

  “All night?”

  Clane tapped the sheet in his lap. “I was in bed with the body part of these pictures, Edith.”

  “Mr. Clane!”

  “The name is Jim,” he said. “We’re going to be familiar as hell from now on in. And if, in the future, you fall for me and get jealous, remember it was in a good cause.”

  She said stiffly, “I’m not interested in your reasons—or in your private life.”

  He said, “Nevertheless, remember this: you weren’t up to see me last night. Not only for the sake of your reputation but because I have an alibi.”

  “I’m not worried about my reputation, except that it might affect Dad.”

  Noble, he thought. Nuts. He said, “Ed Thorne had me spend the night in bed with his charming wife. That established an alibi for both of us. In fact, he and your father walked in on us this morning. Thorne registered surprise. Your old man is too shrewd. He knew what was going on, but he’ll play it our way.”

  “Not if it means hiding a murderer!”

  “Not if he knows it means that,” Clane corrected her.

  She shook her head. “But Natalie Thorne. Why did she need an alibi?”

  Clane tapped the pictures again. “This is her body, Edith. How did he get hold of such pictures? I’d swear it’s her body.”

  “You should know,” she said.

  Clane laughed outright. He said, “Do you have any scissors in that handbag of yours?”

  “Nail scissors.” She dug them out.

  Clane clipped at the sheet she had given him. He took the central photograph and clipped it free, all but the head. He gave her back the scissors. “For comparative purposes only,” he said. “I’m not nasty-minded.” He took a match and held it to the rest of the sheet. It flamed up, burned quickly to ashes. Clane rubbed the ashes into the floormat of the car. The odor of burned film was strong.

  “Now” he said, “start with last night and give me a detailed account. Don’t leave out anything.”

  “I told you Dad and I argued. Then he left the house after dinner. When he didn’t come back I began to worry. I kept thinking of the way he had threatened Anthony that afternoon. I got my car and went up to Anthony’s. That was sometime after ten. I parked around the corner. Dad’s car was there. So I drove on by and parked under a tree. Just as I was leaving the car I saw Dad. He was walking fast. He got into his car and drove away. He drove faster than I had ever seen him.

  “I was terribly frightened then. I sat in the car and smoked until I calmed down.”

  “How long between the time you saw him and the time you got to Wickett’s?”

  “I smoked two cigarettes. Ten minutes. I had to walk through the rear way. Fifteen minutes altogether. I went in through the French doors, into his library.”

  “Is that the way you always went?”

  “Yes.” She flushed. “All right, I did go there often. I’m not very bright, am I?”

  “You didn’t say you hadn’t before,” he told her. “You just implied you went infrequently.”

  “I went about three times a week,” she admitted. “Whenever he called me. It was usually after eleven.”

  “Always that late?”

  “No, occasionally quite early. Between seven and eight or between eleven and twelve. I never stayed over an hour.”

  “And you weren’t seen any of these times?”

  “I don’t think so. Anthony didn’t think so.”

  “Go on.”

  “I went in the library. Anthony was at his desk. I spoke to him and he didn’t answer. I—I went up to the desk. He was dead.” She shuddered.

  “You didn’t hear any shot while you were going in?”

  “No. The radio was on, not too loudly but not very soft. I turned it off. The noise made me nervous.”

  Clane said, “A wonderful invention, the radio. Then what did you do?”

  “I searched his desk,” she said. “I found what I was looking for in the bottom drawer.”

  “You started at the bottom or the top?”

  “At the top,” she said.

  “And you didn’t find any other pictures—like the ones on that sheet?”

  “No,” she said. She looked at him, puzzled. “Should I have?”

  “I don’t know,” he admitted. Evidently, he thought, someone had put the picture of Natalie in after Edith Morgan left and before he arrived.

  “Then,” she said, “I went to Blake Watson’s. I left Anthony. I was scared for Dad. I—I saw Dad leaving Watson’s. It was just like Anthony. Oh, it was horrible.” She was blinking now, fighting tears. Clane glowered at her to scare them back. She sniffled.

  “I went into his place. He was dead. Just the same way.”

  “And the gun? The .32 you threatened me with?”

  “There was no gun,” she said. “I hurried home. I had to talk to Dad. I had to know what was happening.”

  “And when you got home?”

  “I came on Dad climbing the basement stairs. He was sick white. I made him lie down. I gave him a sedative and he went to sleep. Then I went into the basement to see why he had been there. I found the gun. It was back of some fruit jars. I took it.”

  “My God, what a chase,” Clane said. “But why did you go to Watson’s place?”

  “His name was scrawled on a desk memo pad. The sheet with the writing on it had been torn off. But the imprint was still on the sheet below it.”

  “And you assumed your father had torn off the top sheet and gone there?”

  “Yes. And I talked to Dad this morning. We talked some of it over. I couldn’t hold back any longer. He went to Watson’s and found him dead.”

  “Last night you told me your father left Wickett alive.”

  “I was—I was defending him.”

  Clane said, “This is a mess, Edith. Look. Your father goes to Wickett and argues with him. He runs out of the place scared to death. He walks up to Wickett’s desk and takes a sheet of his memo paper with Watson written on it. He did this while Wickett was alive. At Watson’s he finds the man dead and he takes the gun that killed him. You go into Wickett’s place fifteen minutes after your father leaves and you find the man dead. You search the desk and in plain sight is the very thing you have wanted for so long. Only you don’t find the original, just a copy. No sooner do you leave then I stumble into the place. I find Wickett dead and I search his desk. I found another picture in plain sight—only you seem to have missed it.

  “Does it make sense that the murder went in after your father left and killed Wickett? That he took the original sheet and left the copy for you to find? Then he ran to Watson’s and beat your father there so he could leave a dead man for your father to find. And then he ran back to Wickett’s and put the photo I found in the desk—after you left and before I got there. Now what the hell?”

  She turned her pale face away from him. “I don’t know. It doesn’t make much sense, does it? Unless—unless—”

  “Unless your father killed them both,” he said brutally. “And unless he is the one with the original of that scandal sheet. That doesn’t explain the photo I found nor your father’s cigar case in Wickett’s pocket. Unless you put those two items in to confuse things.”

  “Why should I? Why should father keep that scandal sheet?”

  “I don’t know,” he admitted. “Why was Blake Watson killed?”

  “Because,” she said heatedly, “he deserved to be killed. He worked for Paul Grando.”

  TWELVE
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  “Grando is the enemy?” Clane asked. “He’s on the mayor’s side of the fence?”

  Some of the heat was out of her voice, and she shivered distastefully. “Paul Grando is mixed up in every filthy business in Dunlop.” She stopped and looked at Clane.

  “And Watson was helping him?” Clane said. “Watson was part of this ‘filthy business’?”

  “I don’t know,” she said vaguely. “Except that he worked for Paul Grando. I’m sure of that.”

  From there on she was even more vague. Clane could get no satisfaction beyond her statement that Watson worked for Grando in a supposedly secret capacity. When he pressed her as to her informant she hedged. Disgusted, Clane had her drive him to the nearest point where he could get a cab.

  The last thing he said was, “Sit tight. If anything comes up keep in touch with me.”

  He got into the cab and told the driver to take him to the Super-Service station.

  He found Bob Morgan greasing a car. His face showed worry as he peered from under the car and waved a greasy hand. Clane said, “It’s okay.”

  “You gave her a break, Jim?”

  Clane’s smile was sour. “Did she need one?” He leaned against a truck tire propped alongside the station wall and lit a cigarette. “It’s time you opened up about last night, Bob.”

  “I told you,” Bob Morgan said. He was under the car he was greasing and his voice was muffled. Clane couldn’t see his face.

  “You told me you saw your dad and your sister. That’s all you told me.”

  Bob Morgan came out from under the car and turned his back to Clane. He was very busy putting another grease gun on his air hose. He said, “That’s all I saw.”

  “You don’t know if Wickett was dead before or after your father showed up?”

  “Dad didn’t kill him. I’m sure now.” Clane waited and Bob Morgan went on, “Look, Jim, Dad and I have disagreed but I know him pretty well. He isn’t that kind.”